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Chapter 6 - Usurped (TCOK)
Tubba marched on the sandstone path back toward the castle. Behind him, the dying sun set the already red sands on fire as he strode home, alone. He always bid farewell to Gonzales before he left the school, as part of the mandate of his father to keep his birthright a secret. Tubba had to resist the temptation of revealing how he was the Prince to Gonzales and the rest of the Clubbas, thus crushing the tormenting they were so keen on exacting on him. He had not treated his wounds from the Bubba fight properly, so they were biting him as he closed in on the stone walls of the Clubba Castle. Clubba Castle was a large castle, with a fake interior wooden wall and a burly stone wall, having been constructed almost a thousand years ago, slightly north from the ruins of the first Clubba Castle. The name around the Mushroom World was "Tubba Blubba's Castle," because of the current monarch. The Clubba Castle was the permanent residence of the monarch and the immediate family of the monarch normally, but it was a trait of Tubba's family that there was next to no immediate family who stayed in the Castle. Their father, Tubba Sr., was an only child, and his cousin had left the Kingdom in 1993, before she soon died up north in Ice Land of the Mushroom Kingdom. Tubba wondered what it would be like to have family around him all the time; his father spoke glowingly of the brief year he, Karubba, his father, and Nefubba, his grandmother and current Queen, were all living. As such, the only permanent residents of the Castle were Tubba Sr., Tubba himself, Chubba, and a few high-ranking officers. The soldiers who often were inside Clubba Castle had houses to the south of the Castle, so that in times of crises, they could quickly respond to protect the King or Queen. Tubba nodded to the soldiers who were guarding the front gate to the Castle. He didn't envy them - it was a chill Month Star night - but, Tubba knew that if it really did get cold in Gusty Gulch, his father or Clubbar would invite the guards into the Castle to guard from the inside. More guards were already pulling open the door to the Castle when he approached it through the courtyard, and he left the crisp night behind and entered the welcoming atmosphere of the Castle. "Tubba!" Tubba instantly heard his name being called the moment he entered the foyer of the castle. He felt his heart sink as he heard the rough and strict tone of the voice, knowing that Chubba had beaten him to the castle and had told their father of the fight he had had with Bubba at the school. Attempting to delay the inevitable, Tubba tried to act desperately curious in the peeling beige wallpaper of the foyer, glancing at the light birch wood beyond it. “Tubba!” His father shouted again, and Tubba turned to the imposing figure that his namesake was. While under the Star Rod’s power, he had grown in height to a tremendous degree, his shell growing spikes and his arms swelling with muscle. Now, free of the Star Rod’s influence, Tubba’s father was merely a slightly-below-average blue Clubba with stark orange hair. “Hi, Dad...” Tubba gritted out, waiting for the blow to fall. His father’s eyes were boiling with a fury that Tubba was accustomed too. Tubba was too often straying from the perfect Crown Prince mould that his father craved, and he would bear the brunt of his father’s anger when he would get into needless fights with Bubba - Bubba especially. As the son of the Clubbith family, a high ranking family in the Kingdom, Bubba was special. Often, Tubba felt that his father wasn’t on his side, but after confiding these issues in Clubbar, Clubbar merely told him that his father wanted the best for Tubba. A vague answer, and not one that Tubba found satisfaction in. “Tubba,” his father began, his voice trailing off with exasperation. “Chubba tells me you got into a fight with the Clubbith boy again. Is this true?” Tubba Sr. spoke with a hesitancy, as if allowing his son to deny the accusations against him. Tubba stared his father down. “I guessed as much. Tubba, you can’t let this happen,” Tubba Sr. began, his tone imploring. “You’ve confided in me that you dislike the Clubbith boy, and I understand. But you have to understand - and it is imperative you do -that you and the Clubbiths’ son will have to work together in the future. That is a fact. The Clubbiths are too high ranking a family for you to scorn this way.” Tubba did not bother responding. He stood, resolute, in the foyer, turning away from his father and examining the wallpaper around him. “Walk with me, son.” Tubba Sr. rested his scarred and coarse hand on Tubba’s shoulder. Tubba was nearly an adult, so while he was an inch or two shorter than his father, who was about six feet and four inches, Tubba knew that he would grow taller than his father, but still remain on the scrawny and short side for a Clubba, with his ceiling being six and a half feet. Letting himself be guided out of the foyer and into the halls of the Castle by his father, he waited for the inevitable story of when his father was his age. “Tubba, when I was your age,” the senior Tubba Blubba began, looking outside the various windows at the stars now dotting the black blanket coating the Mushroom World as they walked down the hallways. “My father and I were very disconnected. Your grandfather, Karubba, was a warrior King. The rumour in the Kingdom is that he took inspiration from Morton Koopa of the Koopa Kingdom - a Koopa whose reign preceded Karubba’s reign in our Kingdom by two years. Morton, as I’ve read, was large on self-reliance and releasing oneself from their family - in an effort to further concern themselves with the Kingdom.” “So?” Tubba overrode his father as he drew breath to continue. “I’m not Morton. I’m not Karubba. I’m not you. Why should I care?” He met the surprise in his father’s face with a glare, making sure that his father understood his displeasure. “I had a much more hands-off father than you do, Tubba.” Tubba Sr. exhaled deeply out of his nose, keeping his tone level, but Tubba knew that he had irritated his father. “In times of difficulty, when I felt I couldn’t rely on my father, I didn’t go getting into street brawls with the Clubbiths, or any other family, for that matter.” Tubba II snorted. “Clubbar told you, then?” Making a mental note to confront the elderly Clubba Commander later, he didn’t stop at that. His father was so keen in making him the scapegoat for the fight: “And when was this? The seventies? Back when everyone knew you were the King’s son?” “Tubba!” His father waved a blue arm in exasperation. “You are going to be announced as the heir to the Kingdom the moment you become an adult, on your fourteenth birthday. How do you think the Kingdom will feel if it’s the fight-creating delinquent that’s to be the future King? I wanted you to grow up unencumbered with the weight of your birthright, and yet you’re not taking it seriously enough!” “What if I don’t care about public perception? What are they going to do when I’m King? Dissent against me? Overthrow me?” Tubba shot back, clenching his fists in anger at his father’s desire to pin the fight on him, “no Clubba King has ever been evicted off the throne!” “Don’t you be the first!” The dark eyes of his father were burning with frustration, “it shouldn’t be this difficult to stop you from having fights with the other Clubbas! Chubba would understand!” Tubba dug his heels in and stopped, letting his father wander past him. “Why don’t you make your perfect Chubba your heir, then? Why me? If I’m the problem, why not just remove me?” Tubba could barely stand, his feet were shaking in fury. The gall of his father, to first pin the fight with Bubba on him, and then to suggest that Chubba would be the superior heir - Chubba, obsequious, selfish Chubba, would be a superior heir and King than Tubba. “Fine! If that’s what you so desire, then Chubba is indeed the heir to the Clubba Kingdom!” Tubba’s Sr. proclaimed, halting as well in the hallway. “He, unlike you, understands the value of making friends, and not foes, at this young age. Perhaps he is the Clubba to take the Kingdom forward, and not you - not if Tubba II will be a relapse into the Karubbian era, where we will be at war with every Kingdom for decades!” Tubba felt the sudden weight of the decision his father made fall upon his shoulders, nearly knocking him off his feet. “I see.” Tubba grunted out, turning away from his father, heading blindly down the hall, hoping to get away, anywhere, to make sense of his life again.